You know what they say about best laid plans, etc etc...well this past weekend was a case in point. Here was what I thought my weekend was going to go like:

Friday morning--Go to work until 11 AM, then leave for trip to CT to visit parents for weekend.
Friday night through Monday AM--Hang out with parents in CT.
Monday afternoon--Drive back to Maine.
Tuesday morning--Return to work.

Here is what actually happened:

Friday morning--Wake up feeling a little "off". Notice a cough starting up. Go to work anyway. Return home at 11 AM. Start feeling really crappy. It's a cold! Hooray!
Friday afternoon--Call mom to tell her it looks like I won't be coming.
Friday night through Sunday morning--Nurse myself through the nasty cold.
Sunday morning--G. starts coughing. Oh boy, he's sick too! My cold still isn't gone yet either.
Sunday afternoon through Monday evening--Two people nursing themselves through nasty cold. Such a fun way to spend the long weekend.
Tuesday morning--Feeling somewhat recovered and return to work.
Wednesday afternoon--Get a call at work from G. Now he has the stomach flu, too. Ai!

Yeah, not-so-good things happening on this end. It's almost inevitable that I'm going to get the evil stomach flu too...although the mysterious thing is that we have no idea where said stomach flu came from. G last left the house on Saturday, and we really did not have any contact with anyone since then. That seems like a long time for a stomach bug to incubate, but who knows. We also ate all the same foods so I don't think it's food poisoning. I'm thinking maybe I'm some kind of typhoid Mary, ha ha ha.

I actually did finish up my Dale cabled raglan sweater a few weeks ago, but only getting around to posting it now.Pattern notes:
Dalegarn Raglan Sweater, pattern #15206 from Dalegarn #152
Dale "Baby Ull" in color #5755, on 2.25 mm needles
This was a pretty straightforward pattern, though time-consuming. I made the 3-4 year old size and it's not quite as quick as those little baby patterns I was doing last year! I didn't find any problems with the pattern. The one thing I did realize is that making a reverse stockinette sweater in the round, well, sort of defeats the purpose of knitting in the round! Lots of purling, yup. It didn't really bother me though, except when I was starting the sleeves on DPN's...it was impossible to make the fabric smooth at those points where I switched from needle to needle. You can see the lack of smoothness in this shot of the sleeve:It isn't full-on laddering, but I had to do some major tightening and tweaking to get it to be even this smooth. I also tried moving the "join" point back and forth a few stitches every few rounds but it didn't really help much. If anyone knows a foolproof way to work reverse stockinette in the round without having this happen, please enlighten me!

Oh, and I still can't get the color to photograph right. This is about the best I could do:Which brings me to another sad thing...I feel like my camera's performance is starting to decline a bit. I don't know if that's even possible (or normal), but it just seems like I can't get as sharp photos as I used to. I am still working on finding the best place in my house for natural lighting, but still... I also tried cleaning the lens so I don't think that's the problem. It's about 3 or 4 years old (which is probably ancient in terms of consumer electronics, ha ha) and to be honest I have not treated it with total and complete TLC (sorry, camera!). So, I've been perusing cameras a bit on line but I doubt that I'll buy anything very quickly unless my camera totally dies. Mostly because I have no idea what I would even want. It would be so fun to get an DSLR and be able to take some crazy pictures, but the $$ situation isn't super flush right now. Plus, they're kind of big and inconvenient when you're on the go, just taking some snapshots. Now, in an ideal world I would get BOTH, but alas...

Gonna shuffle my McGlumly self off now, and hope that the vomit bug doesn't attack me next!

Thanks to all for your comments on Sapporo and our new house...and thanks so much for continuing to read despite my comings and goings :)

With things getting more and more settled in here, it's so much easier to get focused back on the knitting. I am still plugging away on the Dalegarn Raglan sweater for my friend's son, whose birthday is about a month and a half away now. I think this will probably be done by the end of this week (famous last words, lol).I'm finally past that awkward "Eek, there's too many stitches on this needle!" phase, and have decreased enough for the knitting to be comfortable. Well, at least until I get to the "Eek, there's not enough stitches on this needle!" phase, ha ha. I really cannot get these photos to show this yarn's proper coloring, though. It definitely has some blueberry undertones like these photos show, but to the eye it is quite a bit darker, though not navy either. Here's a closeup of the cable:Once this is complete, my next planned project is the Katherine Hepburn Cardigan from the book Lace Style. I will be using the beautiful Anny Blatt yarn that my sister gave me last year. Here is my gauge swatch...I am really taken with the yarn/stitch pattern combo!Unfortunately this may become another one of those looonnnggg, drawn out projects of mine, as I am going to have to do some serious baby knitting over the next three months. I have four friends having babies between late-April and mid-May, yikes! For three of them I will probably be making smallish things (booties, socks, hats, maybe a cardigan) which won't be too bad. The fourth is my best friend (same one whose son is getting the raglan sweater above), so I want to make a blanket and stuffed animal and maybe a sweater too. She is pretty sure she is having a girl, which is wonderful from a knitting perspective. So many cute girl patterns!

The big excitement here this week was the delivery of our new washer and dryer, after being on backorder for the last two months. They are made by Samsung, which I didn't really know made appliances. But they seem really sturdy and nice, so hopefully they will prove to be a good choice. Today I finally ran a load for the first time. The funniest thing is whenever there's anything interesting going on in the basement, Quincy creeps down the stairs to the first one he can see from, and checks out the situation. Like this:As you can see, he was totally intrigued by the movement and sounds of the machines:I don't know about where you are, but it is snowing like mad here! We've gotten about 8 inches in three hours! Perfect day for knitting, so I think I'll skedaddle now...P.S. Can you believe it's less than 2 days until the inauguration? I've been enjoying watching my George Bush countdown clock (in the sidebar) wind down, as I've had it there since I started this blog three years ago. Now it says "1 day 8 hours". Hard to believe, but I must admit it's been a long wait ;)

Okay, so I totally lied about being back here on a more regular basis. Sorry, sorry...BUT, I did have a good reason for being away...
Meet our new house, all in blue during a snowstorm:After many years of saving we finally bought our very own abode, and it is wonderful :D It's just a little place, two bedrooms, but enough for us (and not overwhelming to clean, lol!) It doesn't need a ton of work, although we will have to reshingle the roof this spring. Also high on the list is painting the exterior anything but the current poo brown. Here are some interior photos, as you can see we haven't really done any decorating or anything yet. Also, things are still kinda messy. I guess we're not ready for our BH&G photo shoot yet.And our view off the back deck (which will be much more fun in the summer, yeah). The yard is pretty postage-stamp sized but I can't wait to start gardening!There's more exciting news too...(wait for it)...I finished Sapporo! Wooo! It took me just under a year from start to finish (although of course I didn't work on it all summer), and I am very happy with it. G seems happy with it too. Glad I finished it in time for his upcoming ski trip.Pattern Notes: "Sapporo" by Dale of Norway, knit in Dalegarn Falk (colors black #0090, grey heather #0007, fern green #9155, natural #0020, and sand heather #0004) on size 2.75 mm needles.This was a good pattern, although I really should have read it all the way through before starting or at least before doing the finishing work. I did my own "unique" iteration of the zipper/collar. But it works, so whatever. The yarn was fine too--a nice, basic workhorse yarn--my favorite type.I really love working the fair-isle/two color type stuff...it's just endlessly amazing watching the pattern slowly emerge. I love it so much that I've already bought all the yarn for my OWN ski sweater...though I think I'm gonna wait awhile before starting it, he he. Right now, I'm really feeling the urge to do some cablin' and some lacin'...what will it be? More details next time :DI'm a bit late, but wishing you all a peaceful and prosperous new year!